Eco-Chick · The modern girl's guide to living green & fabulous.

Eco Fashion on the Lower East Side of New York City: Visit Kaight and Hairy Mary's

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by Starre Vartan · 05/25/09

I had fun being the camerawoman and stylist for this fun video that Ayana Meade, my colleague at Greenopia, modeled, MC’d, and edited. We visited two of my favorite eco boutiques on the Lower East Side (LES) of Manhattan: Kaight (new, modern eco fashions), and Hairy Mary’s (vintage and reconstructed clothes) and talked to their owners about what made them passionate about what they stocked, the environment, and how they chose their wares.

Many thanks to Kate McGregor, owner of Kaight and Sharon Broit, owner of Hairy Mary’s for taking the time to speak with us!

Kaight received the highest rating of four leaves by Greenopia’s independent rating system, and Hairy Mary’s will be ranked soon!

ecofashion, Manhattan, New York City, video

Project Earth Day Fashion Show, 2009: Student Competition

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by Starre Vartan · 05/04/09

The first part of the Project Earth Day Fashion show included the student competition, which was stronger this year than ever! I was really impressed with the range of design aesthetics and materials used. Colors, neutrals, textures, patterns; they were all on display, and all Earth-friendly too.

Judges for the competition included Drew Becher, Executive Director of the New York Restoration Project, Janine James, Founder and Creative Director of design think tank, The Moderns, John Schroeter, President and CEO of Applied Textiles, and Josh Dorfman, The Lazy Environmentalist himself. Scroll down for all the entries, and then the winning design.

How did they judge? According to Inhabitat: “Judges, clipboards in hand, were asked to rate student designs on Creativity & Concept (50%), Technical Execution (25%), and Eco Design Principles Checklist (25%). We thought it was quite clever that the Eco Design Principles portion included criteria such as Sustainable “Sites”, Energy and Atmosphere and Innovation in Design, mimicking the checklist that sponsor USGBC NY uses for LEED certification of buildings!”

The first look in the student competition- starting it off with a visual BANG!

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ecofashion, Manhattan, New York City, Project Earth Day Fashion Show

Green in Paris

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by Melissa Goldberg · 05/19/08

So I think I have used up my allotment of fossil fuels for at least the remainder of this year, or more likely the next decade. Why? My husband surprised me with a birthday trip to Paris last weekend.

Americans have a love/hate relationship with the French. So of course as an American and a “greenist,” I had to do some hardcore observations of Parisian “green” habits and compare them to what we do here. What I discovered from my four days in the “City of Lights” is as follows.

(1) Recycling
There is a recycling program in place in Paris, but I am not sure if the Parisians are interested. On some streets they have huge recycling bins for bottles and cans, but most of them were covered with graffiti (which happens to be all over the city). In the parks, they have recycling bags next to the the garbage bags but as you can see in the picture, recyclables are also placed in the garbage bag. On a walking tour the Marais, I asked our tour guide about how well Parisians recycle. She said they are horrible and during our tour she opened a recycling bin from an apartment building to show us what she meant. It was filled with recyclables and non-recyclables.

(2) Reusables
My husband and I went in a few supermarkets (which I love to do whenever I travel abroad), and outdoor markets and I think I saw maybe 5 people using reusable bags. The worst was in the outdoor markets where you can buy fruits, vegetables, meats, cheese, bread, fish, flowers and much more. The biggest one we went to was in Versailles, and everything was put in a plastic bag. Many did bring their own reusable totes but those bags were then stuffed with plastic bags. It appeared to me that they may use more plastic bags than we use.

(3) Transportation
Paris is a very busy city with lot of traffic. But I would not say that they have any more traffic then New York City. They do drive smaller, and most likely, more efficient cars (I didn’t see one Hummer or SUV) and many people ride bikes and take the subway. I think more people ride bikes in Paris then they do in Manhattan–but not as many as in Beijing. But the most ingenious thing that we observed in Paris was a bike rental system called Velib. The system began in July 2007, with 10,000 bikes, and now they are up to 20,000 bikes all over Paris. Riders can buy monthly, daily or hourly passes to rent bikes stationed at more than 1,400 automated stations across the city. A bike can be rented from one station and returned to another. From what we saw, and from the doubling of the number of bikes in use, it appears that the Parisians love the system. My husband and I wished we had more time to try it out. Its funny, the first few days in Paris we weren’t sure what these bikes were. Initially we thought they were motorized, then we didn’t understand the rental system. By the time we figured out what was what it was it was time to go. I wonder if this would work in NYC?

(4) Food
You should know that I have an obsession with food. Our trip to Paris had some gastronomic highs–the picnic in Versailles– and some lows–dinner at Chez Andre off the Champs-Elysées. So of course I had to find out where the French food comes from. I think this is a department that they really do better than we do. French farmers say no to GMO’s –they even strike and riot to oppose them on a semi-regular basis. None of the fruits or vegetables grown in France are from genetically modified seeds. NONE! We can’t say anything like that here. You can also find organic produce in Paris. We spoke to some butchers and they insisted that none of the meat is treated with antibiotics or hormones and that beef is grass-fed. One of the butchers we spoke with even made a stink face when referring to grain fed beef. I could not find anywhere on the internet to confirm or deny this so I have to take their word, for now. I did ask Shannon Hayes, a grass-fed beef farmer from Sap Bush Farms and author of The Farmer and the Grill and she said “It is my understanding is that not all meat in France is grass-fed. But a fair amount is. Quite often it depends on the breed – charolais beef, for example, is supposed to be exclusively raised on grass. When I was there I saw a lot of cattle grazed and fed in the barn – a model that is infinitely more sustainable than factory farms, but not, according to our strict definitions, grass-fed. The meat is also much more likely to be raised on small farms, not from confinement facilities.”

So what do I take from my trip to Paris?

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Beau Soleil: C'est Tres Chic…

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by Starre Vartan · 10/06/07

Beau Soleil is a new line of ecofriendly dresses, and are they gorgeous! Designer Anne Epstein uses bamboo, veggie-dyed organic cottons, vintage fabrics, tencel, and recycled leather trims in her designs. What caused Epstein to go green?

When Anne discovered she was pregnant, she and her husband morphed their “overly excessive” New York City lifestyle into one that is “Simple. Modern. Organic.”. They moved into a green building located in mid-town Manhattan, increased their trips to the green market, and made conscious everyday living decisions to do their part in saving the planet. This new mindset, coupled with Epstein’s career experience at Marc Jacobs and IISLI, opened her eyes to how the manufacturing process impacts the environment. It was imperative for her to be kind to the planet and laborers when bringing her design vision to fruition.

Beau Soleil is available at Shopbop and Intermix online. These dresses look uber-comfy as well as flattering, with great lines and simple color schemes; I can see them looking great dressed down over a pair of skinny jeans with flats or paired with some fun tights in primary colors like ruby, electric blue or orangy-yellow.

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Tahoe and Yukon Hybrids: Sensible or Stupid?

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by Starre Vartan · 08/02/07

I was embarrassed. There’s no other way to describe how a green, treehugging, environmental blogger such as myself felt clambering into a Chevy Tahoe outside a restaurant on the West Side of Manhattan recently. This ‘full-size’ (read that as gigantically huge) SUV was a hybrid, true, but its slightly lower emissions did nothing for the fact that driving one of these things through New York City streets makes you feel like a road hog, no matter how obsequiously you try to maneuver. Not to mention the flit of panic that cruised across my brain as I thought about parallel parking it (but no matter, it would hardly fit in a parking space on the street anyway). And be not fooled: I have city-driving skills. I’ve been driving in Manhattan since I was 17 (that’s 13 years of competing with taxis, avoiding pedestrians, and lots and lots of street parking).

I was ensconced in the driver’s seat of the not-yet-released hybrid Tahoe because GM invited me. I’ve been writing about how to live sustainably for years now, and I thought that despite my lack of love for SUVs, I should go and try one of the hybrid models out. I’ve driven my friend’s Prius quite a few times, so I know how hybrid engines handle, and I wanted to compare. The hybrid Tahoe is similar to the Prius in that also shuts the engine off at stops, utilizes braking energy to recharge the battery, and runs on battery-only at low speeds, all of which save gas. As soon as the foot hits the pedal, it’s go time, with nary a lag, in the Prius, anyway. Except that this time I was driving a super-sized vehicle, so it still took awhile to get 5,500+ pounds going.

This is the gps thing that also shows you how your car works, in case you’ve bought a hybrid without really understanding what it is (which I’m sure will happen)! But also nice to have a visual to show your friends and family while explaining how your crazy newfangled truck works.

While I was busy praying that nobody I knew saw me driving the Tahoe through the already-congested streets (I realized that I was taking up the space two cars could drive in!), my lovely guide, Mary Sipes from GM, was telling me about how this car was mainly sold to women, who either buy or influence about 85 percent of car-buying decisions. I realized with a depressing thought that us ladies were probably responsible for the whole SUV craze. Because we want to feel safe, and most importantly, we want our children to be safe (even though SUVs, with their high rollover rates, and poor rear-crash protection stats are anything but safer for kids). Still, many people still think that driving the biggest behemoth on the road is smart, ignoring completely what that means to the safety of other drivers when you crash into them.

I am especially sensitive to this last point. I drive a 1997 Saab 900, which is a smallish, zippy car (with not-that-great gas mileage, yes I know! I make up for it by not driving much, as I ride my bike and take the train 80 percent of the time). About six weeks ago, a woman in a glowing gold Cadillac Escalade backed into my parked Saab while I was waiting on line for gas (the irony does NOT escape me here). She was going about five miles an hour and totaled the driver’s side of my car with her bumper. When she hopped out (she was the solo occupant, natch) she apologized profusely, exclaiming that, “The sensor is supposed to tell me when I’m going to hit something behind me!” I guess looking over her shoulder was too much trouble, but it taught me an important lesson: you don’t want to be in an accident with a large SUV. There’s the weight differential, which automatically puts a smaller car at a disadvantage no matter what, and then there’s the fact that her bumper was just about level with my chest as she backed towards me.

It was a scary and sobering experience. The stats back me up. According to a 2005 report by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that looked specifically at crashes between cars and SUVs, “The car occupant death rates went up as the weights of the SUVs and four-door cars went up, but the increase by weight was much steeper when the collision was with an SUV.” And this from a 2002 Washington Monthly article, “When a car is hit from the side by another car, the victim is 6.6 times as likely to die as the aggressor. But if the aggressor is an SUV, the car driver’s relative chance of dying rises 30 to 1.” To feel safe did I need to be driving a huge SUV too? Were our highways now turning into an SUV arms race? You aren’t safe unless you have the biggest truck?

Ms. Sipes told me that there is now what GM calls vehicle-to-vehicle compensation in the new 2007 and 2008 hybrid versions of the Tahoe and Yukon, which is, “Three brackets, mounted to the frame, which manages energy in collisions with smaller vehicles. It’s really simple.” Too bad they didn’t add those earlier; they could’ve saved some lives.

Back at my test drive, I noticed I had to stop much more often since I couldn’t wiggle through spots I would have been able to in my Saab, which made it slow-going. It reminded me of the news article I read that stipulated that the popularity of SUVs was increasing congestion especially in suburban areas, since fewer of the larger vehicles could make it through an intersection in a given amount of time (3-4 SUVs could go through a light in the time it took 5-6 cars).

But onto the main reason I was here. Ms. Sipes was telling me that the fuel economy in the city for the new Tahoe and Yukon (same car, different styling), was 40 percent higher in the city, 25 percent higher on the highway, with the hybrid engine. Which is good news since the non-hybrid version only gets about 13-15 mpg in real-world city driving conditions (up to 20 mpg highway driving).

The little gauge at the upper left tells the driver if she’s driving economically or not. Hard braking and crazy acceleration will take you out of the ‘green zone’.

While I suppose it’s a step in the right direction to put a hybrid engine in a gas-guzzler, I couldn’t help reflecting on the history of the American auto industry, which has vehemently fought fuel-economy standards since the oil crisis of the 1970′s passed us by, leading to the pathetic fact that overall, cars and trucks miles per gallon efficiency has flatlined in recent years. There was a fuel-economy bill that was filibustered by the Senate in 1991 that would have raised standards by 40 percent over a decade. If adopted, we would now be saving over a million barrels of oil a day (not to mention taking a chunk of CO2 out of the global warming equation). Why was it fought so hard in the Senate? Because Ford and GM thought it would affect their profits. It is exactly this lack of foresight that has caused the American car companies to lose market share. To their new Tahoe and Yukon hybrids, I say, too little, too late.

At this point in the climate-control game, hybrids, especially on such large fuel-suckers, are a feel-good choice for soccer moms, not a serious solution. What we need now is cars that run on batteries that we can charge up at night from our solar panel, wind turbine, microhydro system or even coal-burning power plant (still cleaner than burning fossil fuels in an internal combustion engine, according to this information.

Good thing GM’s working on the Chevy Volt. Now that’s a car I can get behind without embarrassment, and it looks like it’ll even fit in the streets of New York.

This puppy’s got hybrid decals all over it but it’s promotional only. The final model will have three slightly less obnoxious silver tags on various parts of the truck, because as Mary Sipes said, “Hybrid drivers want other people to know they’re driving a hybrid.”

Article reprinted with permission from The Huffington Post. Images by Starre Vartan for Eco Chick.

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